von Baur

bee-yoo-tiful

Who says you can't focus on two things at the same time?

I'll have a double!!

Unthinkable!!

Not buying that one, Snailman. The Red Army came within a hair's breadth and millions of human bullet catchers (Stalin's undesireables, btw...why waste a perfectly good gas chamber when you've got millions of enemy soldiers happy to kill off people you want to get rid of anyway) of falling. Hardly what I would call "stronger than all European powers combined". And without the aforementioned help they would have. The Russo-German Non-agression treaty was what I was alluding to when I said "previously complacent USSR". I was going to say "previously complicit", given the alliance, but opted out of it. As for lend-lease, this was a rant that's been building every time I see a history program that mentions the west's "delay" in opening a second front and how the west "sacrificed Russian lives" by not invading sooner, and therefore primarily focussed on direct military action not supply lines. Fact...it was Russia that was late coming to the party, both against Germany and Japan. Yes, the US joined later (less than six months), but we were feeding bullets, beans and bandages to Britain while Stalin was still sitting back working out how he and Hitler would divide up Eastern Europe.

But then who'd handle the Ministry of Silly Walks?

Well, thank God the Soviet Union was there to defeat the Nazis. All by themselves. Without any help. From anyone. At all. To be fair, they were the only ones actively fighting Germany from the start of Operation Barbarosa until Britain (and the Commonwealth countries) and the US opened the second front with the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944... Unless you include the North Africa campaign, which occupied German forces starting four months before Hitler showed his true colors and attacked the previously complacent USSR. I'm sure the manpower and materiels spent there wouldn't have made one bit of difference had it been available on the Eastern Front. After all, German forces didn't get that close to Moscow, or the oil reserves or anything else important. Or if you don't count the invasions of Sicily and then the Italian mainland by Britain and the US shortly after defeating the Afrika Corps. Or the bombing campaign started by the RAF and then joined by the USAAC in 1942 and continued through VE Day. Let's ignore the fact that British and American airmen were fighting and dieing above German soil years before the first Soviet boot ever touched it. I wonder what the effect would have been of making all the airpower and air-defence capability used to combat that available against the Soviet Union. So by my count, Normandy actually represented the fourth front. But I bet that didn't get mentioned once in the speeches. And how much help did the Russians provide in the Pacific? Before the atomic bomb decimated Hiroshima, that is. Yeah, thank God for the Soviet Union. One other thing. I don't remember seeing rows of tanks, trucks, missles, etc at Veterans' Day Parades here in the States. There's the occassional flyover, sure, but not the kind of show-of-force that Russia has indulged in for the past three quarters of a century. We celebrate the soldiers, not the machinery.

One of the best commentaries on elections was the eqpisode from Blackadder the Third. Loved it. The "Standing-in-the-Back-Looking-Stupid" Party. Hi-lar-ious. I understand your elections in the UK are called, not regularly scheduled as here in the States. At least that gives some break. Here the campaigning for the next election starts pretty much as soon as the polls close, if not before.

Ahhh, I see...a two-part plan. Well, the first part worked, at least. That should count for something.

"French commander in chief Gen Navarre had decided to set up a fortified garrison in the valley of Dien Bien Phu...surrounded by rings of forested hills and mountains." I know what the next line said, so please don't bother. It's just that, exactly when did anyone ever say, "We must hold the low ground"?

Cats, IMO, are the second-best animal companions. Ferrets are funnier. "Lil" Jinx??? I'm guessing that's a name from when he was younger. Had an orange cat my wife got from the neighbors as a near newborn, along with his grey&white brother. No matter who was eating or drinking what, he'd stick his face in trying to get some. I named him Moocher. The grey&white immediately made himself at home on our son, Jim's, bed even though it used to take him several minutes to climb up there because he was so small. Any time we'd look for him that's where he'd be, so I named him JK (Jim's Kitty).

Thanx for reminding me how old I am, Dave. I was already in the Air Force and may have been married when that show hit the air. Don't feel too bad about it, though. I'm reminded every time I look in the mirror. Or get out of bed. Or get the "senior discount" without asking for it. Lexx, there's a good reason why you feel that way about the first Star Wars movie. I don't know if you've heard the story or not, but for the benefit of those who haven't: Lucas said that he originally wanted the Star Wars saga to be told in 12 movies. Supposedly he wanted people to be able to spend an entire day watching it. But when he took the whole story to the studios he couldn't convince them: science fiction was believed to be a dead form (like the western...and we all know how badly movies like Silverado and Unforgiven did). 20th Century Fox told him they'd green light one movie and if it did well enough they'd consider more. So he pored through this universe he'd created, looking for one small part of it that, if he weren't able to do any others, could stand alone. And that was it.

I agree with macelena, too. Ocean's Eleven was a good example of that. I loved the original. We watched the remake on a family DVD night and my mother-in-law grumbled all the way through it. Since I was open-minded about it going in I was able to enjoy what it had to offer. You make an excellent point too, Dave, that a movie can motivate some people to read the original work on which it was based. I was actually inspired to read The Hobbit by the 90-minute made-for-TV cartoon in the 70's, even though a good friend of mine had been recommending it and the LotR trilogy for a long time. And I've been wanting to re-read The Odessy (it's been since 1965 or 66) since seeing the opening of O Brother, Where Art Thou. My only worry is that people who have a movie as their first exposure may feel that the book "got it all wrong". Reworking classics is a dicey business. You're going to thrill some and totally piss off others. Robert Downey Jr is a very good actor and I've enjoyed him in many roles. His Chaplin was fantastic...made the man so much more 3-dimensional and relevant to me. Watching his Tony Stark was like seeing the character walk off the comics page. I just didn't care for his Sherlock Holmes. It didn't "feel" like the the man I'd read about years before. Personal opinion. Just to interject, here. My favorite portrayal of Holmes (though Basil Rathbone remains, to me, the image) was by Jeremy Brett in the 1980's. He was so intense while piecing together the puzzle and so giddy once he'd done so. I remember one time he climbed on a sofa and perched himself on its arm as he explained how he'd reached his conclusion. But thank you for recommending the new version. I may just look it up.

Too many in Hollywood have no respect for anything. They've turned Sherlock Holmes into an action figure and Abraham Lincoln into a vampire hunter. There are some who value history and art, but most are prostitues...they'll do anything for a profit.

Looks like you could just buy that instead of the one-dollar ticket, Nesher.

Who says the Germans have no sense of humor?

Dave, Daniel Craig...absoluley. It's been a lo-o-o-ong time (the 60's) since I read the books but that Bond wasn't particulaly smart. What he was was a survivor. Craig got that, perfectly, as did Sean Connery. I still prefer Connery, probably just because I grew up with him as 007. But Craig is my second and very close. Not that I didn't like the Roger Moore movies, but they had little more than titles and character names in common with Ian Flemming's books. The original Casino Royale movie is a completely different beast. Total Recall...completely agree. They took a fair sci-fi based action movie and made it a much more interesting story. I'll give that more to the star than the CGI effects and stunts, though. Star Trek...not so much. The actors are good, but the changed timeline invalidates the TV series at the same time that it uses it as a basis. Just doesn't work for me. If it does for you, great. And I'm not a Trekkie, just someone who grew up on the TV show and liked it. Others? Adam Sandler's The Longest Yard was ok, but I didn't get the personal involvement I did from the original. The Mechanic...If you want a lot of good action watch the new one. If you want a good story with character development and one of the best endings in movie history (right up there with the original Ocean's Eleven), get over the 70's look and watch the original with Charles Bronson and Jan Michael Vincent. Even my son, who is a big Jason Statham fan and hates the gritty, moody look of the period, likes it. And since I mentioned Ocean's Eleven...both versions were fun to watch, IMO, but for different reasons. Push-comes-to-shove, I'd probably say the remake was more fun (somewhere, in some other plane of existence, my mother-in-law is sticking pins in a voodoo doll of me right now). And I won't go into Star Wars again. What does it all mean? Other than the fact that people have different opinions about things, nothing. Nada. Zip. You like what you like for the reasons you like them and they're your reasons, so you're absolutely right. And the same is true for everybody else, too. I hope the new Star Wars series is worthy of its predecessors. From the sound of it you do to. We both seem to agree on that.

I wouldn't spend $42.00 on a picture. That's a complete waste of money. UNLESS... it had the meaning that one obviously does to you. Then it's a bargain at twice the price. Congratulations, sir. Enjoy it.

Don't get me wrong, Dave, I enjoyed episodes I, II, and IIII. It was interesting to see Anakin turn from the idealistic padawan into the evil Darth Vader. And I think they provided us all with an idea of how easy it is to go from one to the other. For ANY of us to go from one to the other. And with the strong moral that we must always be on guard against that and must take care to whom we look for advice and guidance. Though extreme circumstances often require extreme actions wrong, even for good reasons, is still wrong and must be avoided. I do agree with Emp-Palpatine, though, that they lack a strong knight-errant/good-hearted villian/rogue/anti-hero...scoundrel, to use Princess Leia's word. And with Captitaine Vengeur that the humor wasn't, IMO (and we all know what they say about O's) as good as that in episodes IV, V, and VI. I put that down to the expectations. When "Star Wars" (no episode number, just a movie) was being shot the actors were unknowns trying to be noticed, so they had that spirit of adventure which helped them bond as a troupe. And that came through on the screen. For "The Empire Strikes Back" they were reuniting...kind of a, "Hey! Let's get the band back together again" thing and it worked. In "Return of the Jedi" the chemistry was well-established and easy to step back into, for the cast and the audience. The actors involved in I, II, and III had a lot to live up to, and as good actors as they all are it didn't have the click. Could have been the script, could have been the actors (great actors don't always have great chemistry...oftentimes onscreen the whole is considerably less than the sum of its parts), could have been the director, could have been the editting, but most probably it was a combination of the four. But I maintain, and always will, that seeing TPM, AotC, and RotS first fundamentally changes the impact and even the storyline of the SW-ESB-RotJ trilogy. Not ruins, but changes. Having seen Anakin grow up, how can seeing Darth Vader step onto the consular ship impose the same feeling of fear? Lucas carefully staged revealing the Vader-Luke-Leia relationships to maximize the impact of their discovery. Knowing that relationship beforehand can't help but lessen that impact. And Vader's character itself carries a sympathy that doesn't exist if you haven't seen I, II, and III. For those of us who saw IV-V-VI first, it's easy to relive that, but for those who didn't I don't think it's possible. **editted for spelling and Grammar**

Too late for a real submission, but I think the question I'd most want to ask is, "You wanna go have a beer?"

For one thing, thanx to the animal rights people and in keeping with the backlash against individuals of one ethinc background being played by individuals of another, Chewbacca will be played by Sasquatch and all Ewoks will be played by bear cubs. The producers are still waiting to see how far robotics have progressed (both in performance reliability and legal representation) before making a final decicion on C-3PO and R2-D2. *edit* And, in a special encore appearance, the Ice Monster from Hoth will be played by my first wife.

What about the private sector. Somebody call Tony Stark.

To JMBalestre: The saga can end with six episodes for you, if you wish. It most likely will for me. I may catch Episode VII on HBO or Starz or whatever in a few years, so I don't waste any money on it if it turns out I didn't like it. That's what I did with the "new" Star Trek movies (though I did like the revamped McCoy...almost as good as the REAL McCoy). Unfortunately I bought the Amazing Spiderman on DVD. What a waste. The original cast so perfectly captured the characters both in spirit and physically. As much as I like Sally Field, she just isn't Aunt May. And this new kid playing Spidey...I wonder if he ever read any of the first hundred or so issues. I don't know what Peter Parker is like now, but Toby MacGuire was spot on. And therefore I won't be spending any money on the second installment. Not in theaters, not on DVD/BluRay, and I probably won't spend any time on it when it hits TV. Back to Star Wars. Episodes I, II, and III totally reversed the focus of IV, V, and VI changing the story from that of a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters taking on an evil Galactic Empire to one of the seduction, fall, and ultimate redemption of Anakin Skywalker. Luke, Leia, and Han are the central characters of IV, V and VI, but when I, II and III are added and the whole thing is viewed in storyline chronology, they become secondary players, catalysts (Luke particularly so) to Anakin breaking the hold of the Dark Side. Not to mention the fact that there's some initial romantic connection between Leia and Luke that gets plain creepy if you know going in that they're brother and sister. And the "Luke. I am your father." scene loses all its shock value to the audience. Nor would Darth Vader seem so menacing if you already saw him as a 10-year-old wearing a helmet three sizes too big or an idealistic young Jedi who only wants things to work like we all do. I'm glad I had my son watch them in the same order I did. And he's said he will show them to his kids that way, too. MAKO...but that makes mud. Maybe the family has a mud-pie business on the side. On the plus side to all this, we'll finally get to see if Yoda's prediction was correct. Just how will Luke look when 900 years old he is? Princess Leia, like so many women before her, will go from a hot bikini to a muu-muu. I wonder if we'll get to see Han Solo teach his grandkids to fly? "Slow down, dammit!! What are you trying to do? Break my record in the Kessel run?" I wonder if there'll be a legal battle over the use of the word "Droid"? *edit* BTW, no, I haven't read any of the books.

I was just thinking: In Episode IV (the first film) Luke is a moisture farmer, or at least his uncle, with whom he lives and for whom he works, is. Later, at the bar in Mos Eisley, he tells Han that he's a pretty good pilot. To which Han replies, "This ain't crop dustin', kid." So if Luke is dusting crops and his crop is moisture.........???

If I won the lottery? http://combatace.com/topic/82608-a-major-scientific-advance/